Monday, September 9, 2013

Athlete? Who me?

Crossfit throws around the word "athlete" a lot.

It cracks me up.

I was the farthest from a definition of an athlete.

In high school, I was captain of the Spell Bowl team. Yeah, that's right. It's like the Spelling Bee, but there were weekly competitions against other schools. I rocked at spelling. (Grammar is another story, as evident in my posts.) I was also in the math academic team (I'm Asian, aren't I? LOL) and speech team (even though I was super duper shy and totally sucked at it).

Then Crossfit happened and Carole keeps calling us athletes. I feel like I need to be able to do a pull-up to be even considered athlete-ish.

Athlete? Meh... I still don't believe it.

I'll keep working on that pull-up and maybe run over half a mile without  stopping, we'll talk then.

Friday, September 6, 2013

I drank the Crossfit Koolaid

A little background on the past 2 years...

Fall of 2010, I started Zumba. I was going 2-3x a week and even thought about becoming an instructor. It's so fun.  Then on January of 2012, I joined a ladies bootcamp. Taught by my friend Dorian, we met twice a week; the class was HIIT, tabata, or circuit, depending on what day and how many people were in the class. I actually stuck with it for more than 2 weeks.  I loved those ladies. We even took a leap and went outside our comfort zones and went indoor rock climbing and did the Marine Mud Run late that summer. In July, I wanted a challenge, so I also did 60 days of Insanity® with Shaun T on my own, in our garage. My husband started working out again with Insanity as well. I was working out 6 days of the week between Insanity, Zumba and bootcamp.

Then in August, a lady named Carole Turnbo offered a nutritional challenge at our church and she incorporated some Crossfit-type exercises. WODs (workout of the day) as she called it. Some days, it was this tabata-style workouts, some times it's a workout with patterned numbered rounds, like 21-15-9. I was a math geek, so numbers click with me. Carole and her husband, Jim, owned Crossfit Michiana and invited me to try them out for a month. Of course, I had to drag my husband with me. I know he would absolutely love it. It was the perfect opportunity for us to spend time together during the week instead of just me being gone 2-3 nights working out.

So on Sept. 22th, we stepped into Crossfit Michiana for a community workout. On the 24th, we did our first official Crossfit class. I remember getting there early and watching the earlier class do their WOD. All these dudes with their shirts off and fit ladies wearing just sport bras.  They were grunting as they lifted, bars and weights banged as dropped their heavy weights, flying through pullups on what I would learn as kipping pull ups (there is more than one kind of pull-up? who knew?)  Intimidated was an understatement. This is totally my husband's element, not mine. The 7 o'clock class started and there were a handful of beginners, thank goodness. Our first official Crossfit WOD was "Christine"  which was 3rounds of 500m row, 12 deadlifts and 21 box jumps. It. Was. HARD. DUDE! but awesome at the same time.

From that point on, my husband and I were hooked! We used those nights as date nights.  Never would I have imagined that exercise will bring my husband and I closer than ever. I had someone to talk to about WODs and burpees, jerks and snatches and such who can not only understand these jargon, but also encourage me and do it with me!  One year later, and we're still Crossfitting (even through pregnancy!) It's definitely a lifestyle for us now!

I still decorate cakes and cupcakes. I just don't eat them! J

and I still do Zumba.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

switching gears

Here's my dilemma. I started this blog to show off my cakes and stuff. Then Facebook happened and I switched posting here to posting on my Facebook cake page. I want to reclaim this blog to just write what's on my mind. Random stuff from family, events, workouts, food but still separate from my lunch blog. I love my blog address as it is my first name, but I don't know what to do with my cake posts. Part of me wants to delete all the posts. Part of me wants to keep it. Several posts are used for inspiration on different blogs, with links going back to this blog. A handful of pictures are pinned on Pinterest. I don't know. Maybe I'll just treat it like my stuff at home: Stuff that I don't know what to do with, what to use it for, but may use it at some point in the future, so I just shove them in our office/guest room aka "storage/hoarder room". I'll keep them a little longer and maybe they'll get buried after several new posts.